Thursday, 7 June 2012

Letting it all go

It's been a week now since my brother departed for the US to marry the girl of his dreams that he met on youtube. I've had the apartment to myself and I cancelled my cable before he left, so I've had plenty of time for reflection.

He had the courage to let it all go. He quit his job and sold all of his worldly possessions, even his most cherished ones, so that he would have enough money to travel there and have some spending money while they spend time getting to know each other in person.

He knew full well that things could fall to pieces when he got there. They could meet in person and realize that the way they wanted each other to be and the way that they portrayed themselves to each other was different from their true nature. He could get held up in customs and not make it there, making it all for naught.

None of this mattered to him, however. He believed in their love so strongly that he was able to risk everything to make it work.

This makes sense until attachments get in the way and cloud our
judgement, of course. There was many a time when he was trying to sell
something, but was unwilling to sell it for less than his idea of what
it was worth. Thankfully he let them go in the end.

Of course, worldly possessions have only abstract value and are ultimately impermanent, so it only makes sense to give them up if it means that you can meet your true love, or start a new life for yourself, or take a yoga teacher training program, or whatever it is that you believe will make you a better person and make you happy at last.

Even if we let all those things go, though, there's the pesky ego to deal with. It's not enough to let go of your worldly possessions when our ideas about the way we should be, or what we should do cause us further suffering. We can let that go as well.

Accepting reality, messy as it is, without judgement, is a tough pill to swallow. Sadly, it's the only suffering pill on the market.

Maybe we'll never do dwi pada sirsasana, or win a gold medal at the over-achiever olympics, but we can certainly live in the moment, work with what we have, and turn that into enough.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

We're glorious as we are. We sometimes muddy ourselves with our own projections, though.

As any alchemist will tell you, only imperfect things can be brought to perfection; perfect things can only be corrupted. Thankfully we can always polish ourselves back to perfection by removing the projections.